Amanda Shie

2022 Graduate

Majors: Political Science, Asian Studies
Minors: Management, Human Rights, History

Hi everyone! My name is Amanda Shie. I am from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I want to share a little about myself and what brought me to Purdue and to this current academic path.

I majored in Political Science and Asian Studies, with minors in Management, Human Rights, and History, and I also earned a certificate in Peace Corps Prep under the Youth in Development sector. Outside of school, I was a resident assistant at Purdue Village and an ops specialist at the CoRec. On campus, I was involved in the Pi Sigma Alpha honor society, I was an educational ambassador at CARE (Center for Advocacy, Response and Education), a member of the Liberal Arts Student Council, the president of the Chinese Culture Appreciation Club, and a Dean’s Ambassador for the College of Liberal Arts. If you can’t tell, I really enjoyed staying busy, academically and in my extracurriculars.

So, I sound well-established based off what I study and what I was involved in on campus, but I most certainly did not start out that way. I initially applied to Purdue under Anthropology, and I was accepted into that program, but I began to have doubts about that field. Since a lot of my family members are in the aviation industry, they recommended I investigate that industry for a potential change of my major. As a result, before I even got into Purdue, I switched majors from liberal arts to STEM, and that was how I started my freshman year: as an aviation management major.

When I started classes in fall 2018, I started to realize I did not have the passion for even introduction-level material in aviation management. I didn’t make many friends in my aviation classes and ended up more stressed by prerequisites like calculus. Before the semester was halfway over, I knew that STEM was not right for me. My brain simply was not oriented toward math and science. Before I fully committed to transferring colleges within Purdue, my advisors recommended I spend my spring 2019 semester in classes for fields that might interest me.

In the end, I saw much more success in liberal arts classes, especially in politics and Asian studies, and realized I could take the passion for cultures, languages, and making a difference in the world that motivated me to choose anthropology and apply it toward Political Science and Asian Studies, with all of my minors and certificates being figured out as I proceeded in my coursework.

Beyond fitting my personality and strengths much better, I found that in the College of Liberal Arts, I was able to achieve a small-college experience in a large-university setting. In liberal arts, I can form deeper connections with faculty and professors that lead to larger opportunities for success. Only in liberal arts would I be able to make connections with the director of the Asian Studies program and see her become an advisor to a club I never imagined I would be able to create. In addition, liberal arts has literally taken me around the world; I went on a two-week Maymester study abroad around China, and later in the summer, I went to Macau to teach English for five weeks.

I hope something I have covered in this post helps you make a more confident decision of your path here at Purdue and your plans going forward. Best of luck wherever your future takes you!